


The Night the Mountains Howled

by sbuggbot



Series: Umeko's Story [2]
Category: SteamWorld Quest (Video Game)
Genre: Campfire, Campfire stories, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Mostly dialogue but sue me. the characters are just sitting around and talking anyway, Post-Game, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:54:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21626386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sbuggbot/pseuds/sbuggbot
Summary: The Mysterious Merchant tells a story, Tarah gets elbowed by her brother several times for being mean, and Orik realizes he has inadvertently become part of local folklore in more ways than one.
Series: Umeko's Story [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1941955
Comments: 4
Kudos: 2





	The Night the Mountains Howled

**Author's Note:**

> I've been in a fic writing mood the past day or so and I wound up crop-rotating to this idea after starting to stall on my main WIP.
> 
> Here

The group of heroes had made camp for the evening, near their friend and practically traveling partner the Mysterious Merchant (who Thayne had decided to call Emme since she never told her true name. It stuck and she seemed to like it). This, of course, included a campfire, courtesy of Copernica because there was no way she was letting Armilly start one after what happened last time.

“Now what?” Thayne asked, watching the flame. All seven (yes, seven) of them were seated around it.

“We tell stories, obviously!” Armilly said.

Tarah jumped to her feet and raised her hand. “I have a story!”

“Is it one that won’t make anyone puke, pass out, or go straight into a panic attack?” Thayne asked.

Slowly, Tarah lowered her hand and sat back down. “Nevermind, I don’t have a story.”

“I have one,” The Mysterious Merchant said. “I’ve been around for a long while, you know.” 

“Bet,” Orik blurted out sarcastically before he could stop himself.

“This happened a long time ago, when I was a much younger lady,” Emme began. 

“Before even Orik was around?”

“I might be mistaken, but I believe that I’m older than our friend the Merchant, Tarah.”

“He’s soo ollllld~---OOF!” Tarah crumpled over her side and glared at whoever just elbowed her. “Thayne!”

“Be nice, Tarah!” He had his arms crossed and was frowning at her.

Her glare switched over to a mischevious smirk in a flash. “Make me.”

“Do I need to sit between you two?” Copernica asked.

“No,” both kids said immediately and at the same time.

“As I was saying,” Emme said, “This happened a very long time ago and I was relatively young. I was still with my clan at the time. One spring night, we were camped near the Darkfrost Mountains. We never had any business in the mountains themselves, but we had good fortune near them.

“We were preparing to go to sleep when I heard a distant, plaintive cry. My clan members didn’t hear it at first, but I’ve always had rather sensitive hearing. I could point it to a specific part of the mountain range by the time the others could make it out.

“It was so full of pain and sorrow… I’ve never heard anything that even came close to that amount of suffering… It was as if a man’s heart had been brutally torn out of him and broken into a thousand pieces.

“It went on for longer than any of us thought possible, but it faded out eventually. After a minute of quiet, another wail took its place. Rather than a long scream of grief, this seemed to be a single sound, maybe a word repeated over and over…

_ “‘Nande! Nande!!’ _

“That’s what it sounded like. That sound, although the delivery varied a bit. Sometimes it sounded more like a scream, other times I could hear the voice breaking from crying. It was so loud and clear to us, it was as if the mountains themselves were crying in pain.”

Looking down, Orik made a solemn  _ hmm _ noise. Then he suddenly looked up with a mildly surprised and confused look on his face.

“What is it?”

“‘Nande’ is Japanese for ‘why.’”

“So it was like the mountains were asking why they hurt so much…”

“Or whatever nutjob was  _ in _ the mountains at that hour,” Galleo added.

“It was difficult to tell for how long it went on, but eventually the wailing died down. Whether it went on for even an hour or several, none of us could tell. Since then, it’s been known as the Night the Mountains Howled.”

“What, did they not need to breathe?” Galleo asked after a moment of silence.

“No, frogface, the mountains do not need to breathe.” Tarah deadpanned. **thunk** _“Ow--!”_

“He was talking about whoever was  _ in _ the mountains,” Armilly said. “Mountains don’t scream, either. I think…”

“Sometimes the wind makes it sound like it, but they definitely do not,” Copernica said. “Certainly not in actual words.”

Orik was looking down and fidgeting with the solid bracelet around his wrist. His promise band, to be specific. The story didn’t seem absurd to him at all. He remembered it clearly, now.

He had been there, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me on my Tumblr: [sbuggbot.tumblr.com](sbuggbot.tumblr.com)


End file.
